Magic
Magic is one of the Aenverse populace's constants nowadays. The peoples of the past used arcane/Mana magic all but exclusively and few had any ability to use it on their own without semantic or material aid, but due to a cataclysmic event of dubious instigation and result, all knowledge of it was all but lost. The eight elemental magics began appearing in the populace very shortly after - a metaphysical ability set that people began to develop naturally and which grew steadily stronger as generations went on. These abilities quickly found themselves an innate part of almost every inhabitant of the planet; in contrast to the olden days, it's the non-magi who are rare now, though the magic is more limited, and it's less true magic and more a biology-driven metaphysical ability - akin to psychic power, but relying more on the body's energy than the strength of one's mind. This led to it having an alternate title known as Biomagic. Biomagic All individuals born of Aen or Dendria have the potential for any and all eight biomagical types at the time of their birth, as the cellular components that provide it always come in a bundle. As a child ages, some of these parts usually begin to overshadow the others and eventually render their less-influential "siblings" ineffective - the resulting dominant aspect becoming the child's magic type as it continues to grow. This by no means limits any individual to only one - indeed, there are plenty of instances of people ending up with multiple, sometimes even all of them, though in such cases the development of one or multiple of these side-types is often stunted. It is very rare for a magic user to not be immune to the direct effects of their own magic unless deliberately peformed - you can't accidentally light yourself or your clothing on fire unless you intend to, for example. Those who are effected by their own must be taught either not to use it or how to use it in the least detrimental way to themselves. The aftermath of a given magic - flames that spread from the created source, electrified equipment, extreme temperatures, etc. - will effect the person that caused them; they're consequences of magic use, not magic in and of themselves, and thus don't play by the selfdefense rules. Altering existing sources of an element is more difficult than learning how to manifest new instances outright, and is generally considered a learned skill as a result. There is a sort of correlation however, as in most cases, the better a given individual is at manifesting the element, the more likely they are to quickly learn how to manipulate existing sources. Multi-elemented magic users can also learn directly manipulate physical aspects that are combinations of their given elements more easily than someone with only one constituent aspect. As with any bodily function, biomagic requires occasional application to keep it reasonably usable, lest it become weak and atrophy from underuse. Use of magic in general draws from the body's metabolic energy in much the same manner as "true" physical exertion, and thus overuse has a variety of the expected consequences - fatigue, nausea, migraines, aches and pains, the works. This also results in generally more demanding physiology, especially if they use these abilities much; particularly in the form of a higher recommended nutritional intake. Types Biomagic is uniformly confined to a handful of immediate elements - Eight overall classifications, each of which covers both "true" instances of the element itself and a handful of materially or thematically related things or energies. *'Fire' is associated with actual fire, heat, and other forms of thermal energy. It has the greatest immediate offensive potential, leading to it being seen as the most crudely utilized a lot of the time. *'Earth' is associated with dirt, sand, stone, most metals, as well as magma at higher grades. Users of it tend to be able to manipulate the ground directly with sufficient practice. *'Air '''is associated with the wind, gases in general, steam, and the weather in higher grades. It has a lot of overlap with water and lightning, especially in regards of weather manipulation. Not that most practicioners can control the weather in the first place. *'Water''' is associated with most liquids, ice and frozen things, cold in general, steam(joint-associated with Air) and parts of the weather. Again, not that weather control is exactly easy. *'Flora' is something of a misnomer, named after its ability to manipulate plant life with relative impunity. However, its actual coverage area is life in general - plants are the only things that can be directly controlled, and even then only to certain degrees, but regeneration, fertility, immunity and atrophy are all fair game on any valid subject. Going so far as to manipulate others' magical biology is a stretch - something about it makes trying to mess with it not achieve much of anything without world-class skill. *'Lightning' is tied to electricity in all its forms - static, lightning, electrical power, etcetera. Electricity's natural irritability can make it something of a hazard to utilize in any flashy way, but as a general ability category it possesses a wide range of applications, particularly in a technology-driven society such as Aen's. The Light and Dark magic categories are the rarest seen in their raw form, and are assumed to be crude "parent aspects" to the other six. When they manifest directly they tend to be capable of becoming a great deal more powerful than the basic set in practice, due in no small part to their unusual properties in comparison, but they also are far more demanding and require far more practice to empower. Similarly to Flora, the names are rather inaccurate; *'Light' magic under the biomagical system is associated with energy manipulation of all kinds(which just happens to include light) - kinetic and thermal energies are other examples, but it also seems to exhibit some amount of control over life too; It's not nearly as capable of directly impacting living things like Flora is, but it does seem at least able to preserve the life of those "frozen" through use of light magic. *'Dark' magic seems involved in manipulation of space and a small subset of physical laws. It can't directly manipulate materials like more specialized elements can, but it can locally alter traits such as mass, friction, density... basic physical properties of a given material, essentially. At higher levels it can even be used to force open... for lack of a better term, wormholes, bending space itself to connect two points and allowing instantaneous travel until the thing forces itself closed again. Essentially, Light and Dark were terms used to maintain magic classification's classical-element naming convention, because "Energy" and "Space" wouldn't quite fit the theme. The Null As with any biological aspect, some people end up... challenged. The Null is the term used for those people who fail to develop any magic types before 14. Their rarity leads them to be particularly unusual cases, but their lack of ability in a function considered everyday by those around them acts as a particular stressor. Expensive forms of physical therapy can be used in the hope of "awakening" a type in a Null, but the older the subject, the less likely it is to work. Without biomagical components drawing it away, Nulls also have a lot more metabolic energy to devote to other aspects. This can result in improved strength and/or intelligence, but also has a habit of imposing physical and psychological issues tied to the near-perpetual excess of energy, such as attention deficiency and involuntary muscle activity. Mana Magic Mana-powered magic is that of the pre-catastrophe people - a magic with far more widespread uses and completely relieved of elemental restriction, but in its own ways more limiting due to its need for a nebulous energy called Mana. It used to be that mana magic was essentially a mark of elite, with its users having essentially total control over the world as they knew it. But a series of events of dubious circumstance led to the entire thing coming crashing down around them. Following the catastrophic destruction of its former users' society, their techniques and the knowledge of the Mana that fueled them was lost to all but the few surviving mage families, who mostly continue to keep their bloodlines confined to select individuals they can trust to keep it a secret known only among themselves. Even then, a great deal of knowledge and ability has been lost over time, leaving modern mana magic with only a handful of "schools" that can still be uniformly taught around with any degree of consistency. *Creation, which handles the manifestation of objects and materials *Alteration, which changes existing nonliving things in shape or composition *Accretion, which handles attraction of energy into an area, usually more Mana *Augmentation, which covers manipulation of the living *Summoning, which isn't so much actually drawing on outside forces as it is creation of magical automata *Illusion, which covers obfuscation and perception-altering effects Other mana-driven magics do still exist, of course, but are generally uncommon or confined to the remaining lineages of "proper" users who aren't keen on letting others in on their knowledge, even if they would have the capacity to use it if taught. Why Mana is barely used anymore Mana magic used to be theoretically teachable to anyone, and technically it still is. The problem presented now is mostly biological. After the catastrophe that led to mana-magic society to collapse, something was done to almost the entire populace around the end of the fall period, as part of a falling deity's final point of revenge. The result was that, outside of the major families who had still survived, later generations of people began displaying distinct biological changes - namely, something was preventing them from utilizing mana in any fashion. Attempts to brute-force them into being able to do so through exposure only led to severe symptoms akin to radiation poisoning, eventually leading people to stop trying lest they kill or maim more unfortunates than they already had. This trend has continued all the way into today. With the exception of the aforementioned families and the Tetraphys, the modern populace reacts to heavy mana exposure in much the same way as one would ionizing radiation. As mana itself steadily grew in concentration over time due to its relative unuse, the populace adapted alongside, and now a vast majority possess a sort of "shell" that prevents ambient concentrations from endangering them. This also means that your average person will never be able to use mana in the traditional way for any purpose. The second variant of Elderblood are what you get when a child doesn't have this protection, but somehow survives long enough to adapt to their environment - these rare individuals can then learn mana magic similarly to the proper families.